How Thappad became a slap to society, forcing us to wake up to gender blind spots!

Thappad was more than just a film; it was a cultural slap that exposed deeply ingrained gender stereotypes that lead to domestic violence. Here’s a reminder of how it became exactly that!

Growing up as a woman in India, there is so much you absorb and internalize as “normal” that putting those feelings into words often becomes the toughest act. And that’s exactly where Amrita (Taapsee Pannu) came in. She wasn’t a slogan-shouting feminist or someone quoting academic essays on gender inequality. She was simply a woman who wanted two things from life - respect and happiness. Both were snatched away from her the moment her husband slapped her at a party full of people. And something shifted.

Anubhav Sinha’s Thappad came out in February 2020, not in a time when domestic violence or crimes against women were brushed under the carpet. In fact, we were witnessing more women walking out of toxic marriages, reclaiming their narratives. But here’s the thing, it’s not about the willingness to leave a toxic marriage. It’s about recognizing you are in one, and that realization takes time. Amrita was “happy,” or at least she believed she was. She had a patterned, peaceful life: waking up, making tea, soaking in the morning sun with a warm cup in her hands, then switching on the geyser, preparing tea for her husband, waking him up. Her life revolved around her husband Vikram’s (Pavail Gulati) schedule -breakfast before office, dinner after work. His achievements felt like hers; his failures stung like hers. Even broken appliances or his mother’s diabetes automatically became her responsibility. She lived a life of self-erasure, as so many women do and she did it with a smile on her face.

Until that night. At a party celebrating Vikram’s anticipated promotion, tensions flared. As Amrita stepped in to diffuse a fight between Vikram and his boss, he turned and slapped her. The shock was not just in the slap but in the framing of it. The film initially positioned it like an accident born out of misplaced anger. But then you notice a crucial detail - Vikram's best friend was also pulling him back, standing in the same position as Amrita, yet Vikram chose to slap her and not him. Not because she was in the way, but because he felt he had the right to do so.

What follows is worse than the act itself. Everyone saw it - Amrita’s brother and father, Vikram’s brother and mother but they instantly looked away, unsure of how to react as if avoiding eye contact absolved them of responsibility. And then the women of the house, the so-called elders, arrived with the usual script of “these things happen. Let it go.” But the sting of the slap refused to leave her.

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Amrita tried desperately to resume normalcy - cleaning the house, restoring her routine, pretending life hadn’t cracked open but something inside her had broken. Vikram sensed her withdrawal but, being emotionally unequipped, responded by normalizing the incident. He acted hurt, took her out for dinner, tried to brush everything under the carpet, everything except acknowledging the elephant in the room.

Eventually, Amrita walked out and later filed for divorce. Not because she was egoistic or dramatic but because she wanted to respect herself again. Because happiness and dignity were non-negotiable. “It was just one slap,” people told her. The film doesn’t paint her walking away as rebellion. It shows how Vikram, obsessed with returning things to “how they were,” ends up damaging them further, coercing people to lie for him, refusing accountability while Amrita quietly refuses alimony or compensation. All she wants is to find a way back to herself.

As her circle pressures her to adjust because divorce is a heavy tag for any woman, let alone a pregnant one, Amrita starts seeing the gendered cracks around her. Her mother, who is constantly running behind her father, her brother automatically managing household chores, everyone swallowing their discomfort the way Indian families do. Even her high-achieving lawyer, one of the most reputed in the city, silently suffers in an emotionally abusive marriage, trying to fix something broken beyond repair. Her maid, too, lives with a husband who beats her routinely but refuses to leave.

Through Amrita, the film becomes a mirror. As she chooses the road less taken, she discovers the value of self-respect and realizes how losing it means losing everything. She reflects on how everyone around her disappointed her not because they didn’t care, but because they were conditioned to normalize men’s mistakes and women’s endurance. No one asked how she felt, even though everyone knew what happened was wrong. Their only advice - “It’s just one slap. Forget it. Move on.”

But that’s precisely the point. It’s not just one slap. It is a wake-up call. A line that must never be crossed. And her courage becomes contagious. Her mother confronts her own buried disappointments. Her mother-in-law acknowledges the lifelong compromises she made. Her lawyer stands up to her husband. Even her maid finds the strength to walk away. In one of the film’s most powerful emotional reversals, Amrita’s father, who has been her biggest support, finally sees the invisible sacrifices his wife made for decades. That realization alone shows how deeply normalized gender roles have become across generations.

And then comes Vikram’s arc. Despite everything that transpired, the film gives him the space to confront his conditioning. Standing at the edge of losing his marriage, he finally understands his mistake and repents. Many disliked this hopeful ending, believing it forgave him too easily. But they forget Vikram was never framed as a villain, just as a man shaped by patriarchy who was taught entitlement without introspection, someone who believes “I love you” can replace “I’m sorry,” someone who feels threatened when a woman buys a new car or drives one. His transformation is slow, but it begins.

Thappad isn’t just a film about domestic violence. It's a film about gendered conditioning - how we behave, react, and excuse. It forces both women and men to confront themselves, women to stop romanticizing sacrifice as adjustment and for men to call out their entitlement. The slap isn’t just the one Amrita received. It is the metaphorical slap delivered to society, urging us to wake up so that no woman ever has to say, “Ek thappad tha, par nahi maar sakta.” And as both, Amrita and Vikram part ways, crying over 'just because something is meant to break doesn’t mean it hurts any less', the impact of the film was felt. 

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